‘A new life in the countryside awaits’1: interactive lessons in the rural utopia in ‘farming’ simulation games. Dr Matthew Cole Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Open University, UK [email protected] Dr Kate Stewart School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University, UK [email protected] Abstract This paper critically analyses the legitimation of exploitative human-nonhuman animal relations in online ‘farming’ simulation games, with special reference to the game Hay Day. The analysis therefore contributes to a wider project of critical analyses of popular culture representations of nonhuman animals. The paper argues that legitimation is effected in Hay Day and cognate games through: the construction of idyllic rural utopias in gameplay, imagery and soundscape; the depiction of anthropomorphized nonhumans who are complicit in their own subjection; the suppression of references to suffering, death and sexual reproduction among ‘farmed’ animals; and the colonialist transmission of Western norms of nonhuman animal use and food practices among the global audience of players. Hay Day and its ilk thereby resonate with the wider cultural 1 This quotation is taken from the introduction video that plays automatically once a player downloads the mobile app game Hay Day. The player is invited to take over the running of their recently retired uncle’s ‘farm’. legitimation of nonhuman animal exploitation through establishing emotional connections with idealised representations of nonhuman animals at the same time as they inhibit the development of awareness and empathy about the exploitation of real nonhuman animals. By capitalizing on the ubiquitous representation of the rural utopia in Western culture, Hay Day normalizes and thereby perpetuates the oppression of nonhuman animals and facilitates the deferment of a critical consciousness about oppression among game players. This has important implications for educational research, highlighting the role of affectivity in maintaining the exploitative status quo. Keywords: animals; online games; farming; Hay Day; social media; utopia Subject classification codes: Sociology Introduction Western cultures are notoriously coy about educating children about the exploitative and violent practices that are intrinsic to the ‘farming’ of nonhuman animals (for instance forcible insemination, the separation of offspring from mothers, diverse forms of confinement, bodily mutilations and slaughter; see Marcus, 2005; Masson, 2009). Indeed, analysis of mainstream socialization processes suggests that cultural representations of ‘farming’ (and other forms of nonhuman animal use) targeted at children go to great lengths to obfuscate those practices, including the formal education system (Cole & Stewart, 2014; Stewart & Cole, 2009). Mainstream socialization therefore prepares children to inhabit and reproduce a speciesist culture within which nonhuman animal exploitation is legitimated (see for instance Cudworth, 2011; Nibert, 2013; Potts, 2016; Taylor & Twine, 2014). This paper documents how online ‘farming’ simulation games contribute to this process of speciesist cultural reproduction, and thereby tacitly inhibit education about the exploitation of nonhuman animals. Cultural obfuscation is partly achieved through the deployment of a distinctive ‘cute style’ of anthropomorphic nonhuman animal representations that position nonhuman animals as willingly complicit in their own subjection on ‘farms’, notably within the popular genre of ‘farming’ simulations games (such as FarmVille, Family Farm and Hay Day), played via downloadable applications for mobile devices and/or on social media platforms such as Facebook. These games do not emerge in a cultural vacuum – their cute stylizations of nonhuman animals ‘work’ because they recall myriad similar cultural stylizations. As we discuss in detail in earlier work (Cole & Stewart, 2014; Stewart & Cole, 2009), these ways of representing other animals are promoted throughout the childhood socialization process, from stuffed toy animals for infants, through the mass media output of Disney et al., to the promotion of ‘cute’ toy animals alongside nonhuman animal body parts in fast food children’s meals (see also Baker, 2001). ‘Farming’ simulation games then, despite their novelty in relation to their exploitation of social media platforms, are comfortably familiar insofar as that cute style has successfully colonized the socialization experiences of players. We argue that they therefore provide an opportunity to revisit comforting childhood experience of close affective relations with ‘cute’ representations of nonhuman animals that typify the Western socialization process. As such they are also colonialist in the broader sense of normalizing Western norms of affective relations with nonhuman animal representations. A wide array of ‘farming’ simulation games exists, and include hugely popular titles such as FarmVille 1, FarmVille 2, Family Farm and Gourmet Ranch, as well as Hay Day which is the primary focus of this paper. Many are hosted on or linked to social media platforms, facilitating both the sharing of gameplay within existing social networks and the participation in new gaming communities joined through and within gameplay. In 2014 it was estimated that 375 million users per month played Facebook connected games, including large numbers of women comparative to more traditional gaming formats (Willson, 2015). These games cannot be ‘won’ in a conventional endgame sense, but continue perpetually, with potentially endless profit for both the real-life game producers, and the fictional ‘farmers’ within the games, and potentially endless objectification and exploitation for the nonhuman animals represented. The games are run through with explicit capitalist messages – the making of profit is the key to successful gameplay, and the forging of social links merely serve to facilitate this. Linked players do not compete with each other, but collaborate to maximise their individual virtual profits. Players pursue virtual profits from others through selling goods to them, but there is no gameplay advantage in harming or limiting the productivity or sales successes of other ‘farmers’. The games therefore suppress the metaphorical cut-throat character of ‘real’ capitalism at the same time as they suppress the genuine slaughterhouse throat-cutting that ‘real’ ‘animal farming’ depends on for its continued existence. The makers of these games maximise their real-world profits by charging for aspects of play that speed up or enhance features that are available for free, but which without payment take longer to achieve (“micro-transaction purchases”). Games attached to social media platforms share a percentage of this profit with the social media platform. To illustrate the extent of this, in 2011, 12% of Facebook’s profits came from micro-transaction purchases within games produced by Zynga, the makers of FarmVille 1 and FarmVille 2 (Willson & Leaver, 2015). Gameplay revenue is further maximised by the data mining of personal information about players (consented to through the games’ terms and conditions) and their behaviour patterns within the game which are then used to tailor game options in a way to maximise micro-transaction purchases. Beyond this, this mined information is sold on to third parties (Willson & Leaver, 2015). Critics have argued that these games are not games as such (being mundane, requiring little or no skill, and there being no end goal), but data gathering exercises for the financial gain of the makers, front ended by a ‘game’ interface (Willson, 2015). Such is the importance of these areas of sales that Zynga have been referred to as an “analytics company masquerading as a games company” (Rudin, 2010, cited by Willson & Leaver, 2015, p. 149). Several qualitative studies of these games have explored the social aspects of participation in social gaming. For example, Burroughs (2014) conducted an ethnography of FarmVille, using participant observation and interviews with other players, and argues that these games “enable ritual performances that help construct and co-configure new possibilities of social order” (Burroughs, 2014, p. 155). Willson’s (2015) study of FarmVille argues that these games provide a platform for identity co- creation, or impression management in Goffmanesque terms, through the options for customised play options, from choosing one’s play identity to manipulation of the gameplay space. She draws on Apperley’s (2010, cited by Willson, 2015, p. 20) notion of ‘counterplay’: how players personalise and customise the game experience in ways unintended by the makers in order to establish their individuality within the game linked network. These studies have focussed on the social aspects of the participation of players, rather than the representations within the game, which we have sought to explore across a range of media previously (Cole & Stewart, 2014), and the specifics of one social media connected game here. We will argue that this veneer of non- conformity and individuality that appeals to the gaming community is in fact laid over the reproduction of some very rigid norms about the oppression of nonhuman animals, which is not to say that those norms cannot be subverted, for instance by vegan games players (of which more below). Social aspects of these games are not limited to how players interact with the game and each other, but also involve the culturally loaded representations of the scenarios the games are